


Tetrahedron (Five Kisses When There Wasn't A Ghost, And One When There Was)

by psocoptera



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: 5 Things, F/F, Pining, minor ghostbusting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-15
Updated: 2016-08-15
Packaged: 2018-08-08 23:03:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7777141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/pseuds/psocoptera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four vertices, six connections.  Endgame Erin/Abby and Patty/Holtzmann.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tetrahedron (Five Kisses When There Wasn't A Ghost, And One When There Was)

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my wonderful beta Carpenter for character insight, better words, and clarity in the order of events.
> 
> I'm way behind on reading since I've been writing, and I didn't realize until I had already finished this that CharlieBradbury is also writing Patty/Holtzmann busting a ghost at a B&B. No toe-stepping intended! I figure more Patty/Holtzmann is always good and New York is big enough for lots of B&Bs. :)
> 
> Content notes: a strap-on is mentioned but not seen in action. Holtzmann is confused by bisexuality and thinks some mildly dubious thoughts about it. The many permutations of kisses are sequential so there is no infidelity in this story (or polyamory, sorry!).

**1\. First Kiss**

The cemetery is cold, and Abby's thermos of hot chocolate ran out awhile ago. She checks the homemade PIRD, the EMF meter, the differential thermometer array. Nothing.

She sits back down next to Erin on the marble slab where they'd set up camp.

"This is a bust," she says. "I think you were right, that entities are drawn to the living, they're not going to manifest here. Maybe this wasn't worth skipping homework."

"I don't know," Erin says, fiddling with the strap of the camcorder. "It's kind of pretty, at least."

Abby looks around. It is pretty - the moonlight tracing the white marble curves of the headstones and the occasional obelisk, the willow trees darker shadows against the dark-bright of the sky.

"It's pretty," she concedes. "I'm freezing, though - not in a localized manifestation-associated way, just normal, climate, I should have worn long sleeves - "

"You can share my sweater," Erin says. She holds one side of it open and scoots a little closer on the slab, but not touching, not assuming.

"Okay," Abby says a little nervously; she's not sure why she's nervous, that's a practical suggestion, good utilization of resources. Erin's arm settles over her shoulders and Erin scoots even closer, so Abby's cold arm is pressed all along her warm side. Abby can't help but huddle in a little.

Erin's fingers where she's gripping the sweater are curled against Abby's upper arm. Her pinky is just down past the hem of Abby's short sleeve, touching Abby's skin. On the other side, Abby's hand is trapped between their thighs. Abby is suddenly very aware of all this.

"Thanks," she says.

"Um," Erin says. "No problem."

They sit there for a moment. The back of Abby's trapped hand is touching Erin's jeans. Maybe she should... pull it free? But that would draw more attention to it? It twitches a little - it turns out it's really hard to not move your hand when you're thinking about your hand - and then Abby has to pull it free because what if Erin thought that was _on purpose_ , like she was trying to feel her leg or something - 

Erin takes Abby's hand with her free hand.

Abby looks at Erin out of the corner of her eye. She wants to ask what this is, but they're so close, if she turns her head they're going to practically be - 

She turns her head. Erin is right there. Their noses are almost brushing.

"Abby?" Erin whispers.

Abby's fantasies about the night had involved ionizing radiation, but, look, she's not _stupid_ , sparks are definitely crossing the gap.

"Yeah," she says, moving infinitesimally closer, like moving a wire that has to almost but not quite contact another wire, and then Erin kisses her, smelling faintly of hot chocolate, and Abby entirely ceases to notice the cold.

**2\. Goodbye Kiss**

Abby is totally getting back together with Erin. You don't even have to be smart about people to see that - and jesus fucking christ, Holtzmann is not smart about people, she knows that - but Erin jumped into swirling green madness to go after her ex, Holtzmann is 100% sure that's the stuff reconciliations are built on. You didn't have to be Holtzmann-about-machines level smart-about-people to see that. The only surprise to her was that they weren't already sucking face when they pulled them out. Even before that, when they met, Abby making such a big show of how she was With Holtzmann Now - you didn't do that if you weren't still interested, right? If you didn't want to see how your ex reacted. If they flinched when you touched someone else. So, no, Holtzmann can read a people-circuit diagram if it's printed real big like this one, she's the path where the juice ain't gonna flow, and she is fine with that, really, Abby is great but it's the kind of great that'll be just as good across a table as on it, shoulder to shoulder instead of snatch to snatch. If she got to pick her favorite part of Abby it was always gonna be her giant brain, deliciousness of all those soft lower spots notwithstanding, and that's the part she gets to keep right on playing with. New York is full of women, Abby's a once-in-a-lifetime colleague.

So, given all that, Holtzmann takes the first chance she gets to go in for one great last kiss. They haven't even had showers yet, they're still trying to measure everything they can think of to measure. Holtzmann really does need a Gires-Tournois etalon photodetector a minimum of 3852 meters away to see if Erin and Abby got desynchronized from local time in the portal, and she really does need it ASAP before any effect wears off, so it's not _just_ an excuse to send Erin and Patty on a long trip with a heavy object, but, bonus, hey.

Abby's bent over a table, putting physical samples into helium, which is frustratingly more likely to leak than argon would have been but was also, unlike argon, available on zero notice from Joe's Party Emporium a block away. Holtzmann comes up behind her, brushes her white hair away from her neck, and puts her face there.

"Oh!" Abby says, fumbling some scrap of fabric or whatever that honestly probably is not going to make one bit of difference to formulating a comprehensive theory of manifestation. This isn't CSI. Forensics is a weak science. Holtzmann slides her hands down Abby's arms, to her waist, to the swells of her hips, plush and round and for the last few years one of Holtzmann's favorite places to be, after the lab, sometimes _in_ the lab, no one ever came down there except for them, double entendre very much intended, and maybe she shouldn't settle for a kiss? Get Abby off one last time on her tongue? But there's something weird about that, Abby not knowing what's coming after the coming, so, no, just a kiss. Just this.

Holtzmann turns Abby around, moves one hand to the back of her head, and kisses her. It starts dramatic, Holtzmann can't not, the kind of kiss that looks as good as it feels, but then she reminds herself that this is it, this is one last time, so it gets sweeter, more about sensation than how amazing they would look if anyone was watching. She moves her hand from Abby's skull to her face, cupping her cheek, thumb grazing the underside of her chin where she's so soft, tongues sliding familiarly. Pulls away with one last catch of Abby's lower lip.

Abby blinks at her, and, man, Holtzmann has to get this right. She can't say _when Erin comes back I won't get in the way_ because that's the wrong quote, that would be asking Abby to reassure her. That leads to Abby saying "she's like my sister" and doubling down on Holtzmann with all her unshakeable determination and denying that she and Erin are mutually pining. There will be no fucking pining on Holtzmann's watch.

"I'm breaking up with you," she says.

Abby blinks. "Excuse me?"

"I wasn't unhappy," Holtzmann says, and that's the trick here, right? To not give Abby something to fix. "Category Four successful relationship. But you and Erin have Category Five potential, and I can't - I don't want to watch you pass that up. I want to see it happen."

"Oh, sweetie," Abby says, which Holtzmann has never particularly liked from her, like she's Holtzmann's babysitter instead of her partner. "You don't have to... engineer yourself out of the picture because you..." She trails off, then refocuses in her typical Abby way.

"You shouldn't rush into anything," Abby says, hand on Holtzmann's arm. "What we just saw - I've been hoping my whole life I would finally see something, and that was so much more ghost than I ever imagined. So I get it! Everything just changed! But you don't have to - "

"I'm doing it," Holtzmann says. "I did it, it's done." She gently pulls her arm away from Abby. "If I were you, I'd go for it before things settle down too much, but then," she grins, sharp and quick, with a little flick of her tongue, "I wanna hear alllll the details."

Abby opens her mouth, closes it, looks down, covers half her face with her hand, and shakes her head. "I don't know," she says, but she's smiling a weird shy not-Abby smile. Holtzmann feels like she's done her part, at least. The rest Abby is going to have to sort out herself.

**3\. Close-Call Kiss**

Patty is definitely not going to date any of these ghost-hunting white girls.

She _likes_ all of them, but then, Patty likes people. Patty's the person who's Facebook friends with her seat mate when they get off the airplane (unless her seat mate is trying to read, and then Patty sticks to her own book). Patty's the person who goes to speed dating and marks herself interested in every single woman, because they're all interesting _somehow_ , she'd like to hear more about their parrot or their roller derby or their dissertation, sure, why not? Maybe she wishes a few more women would mark her back, but it's not like she doesn't get dates.

The real problem is Patty's _thing_ , Patty's weird luck for dating women on the brink of major career moves. Six weeks with Latisha and she'd gotten a surgical fellowship at Johns Hopkins. Five dates with Ann-Marie and she'd gotten a tenure-track offer at Bryn Mawr. Rheanne had been a struggling artist until she got a fellowship and took off for Rome. There's kind of a legend in lesbian Queens that if you're feeling stuck, you date Patty, cemented when her friend's cousin had gotten a call-back for touring with _War Horse_ right in the middle of their blind date. Patty didn't mind, exactly - it wasn't like she was going to stop being interested in women who were making things happen for themselves. It would just have been nice if the relationship was ever far enough along to talk about trying long distance when they moved.

So it's a total accident when she kisses Abby. What happens is, they're moving into the firehouse, and Holtzmann and Erin go off on a Home Depot run (or rather, Holtzmann urgently needs brackets or something, and Erin goes along so that Holtzmann actually comes back with brackets instead of lawn flamingoes and 1250 feet of copper wire like happened last time). Patty is sorting and shelving their little library (by LCC - she knows Dewey better, but Erin's an academic, it'll be nice for her to feel at home) when she hears Abby walk in.

"Hey," Patty says over her shoulder, "You figure out the space for that backup generator?" which was what Abby was working on, last she heard.

Abby doesn't answer.

Patty drops the rare 1915 Ouija board transcripts she's trying to assign a number and spins around.

"Aaaabby?" she says, drawn out and imploring. Abby's walking across the room, slowly and jerkily, and giant chills are rolling down Patty's spine. Not again, no no no.

"Abby!" she says, loud and sharp, and Abby still doesn't answer, and Patty can't breathe, but she's moving, crossing the floor between them, grabbing Abby by her shoulders and spinning her - 

\- and a white earbud falls out of one of her ears, blasting "Heart of Glass", and Abby looks up all startled and says "what?"

Patty's got her hand lifted to slap her, but Abby is so obviously _Abby_ that Patty kisses her in relief instead. It's like a momentum thing, her panic has to go somewhere, and she's just so damn glad Abby isn't possessed again, it all goes right onto Abby's lips.

Abby kisses back for a minute, and then pulls away gently, hands on Patty's arms.

"You okay?" she asks.

Patty takes a huge, gulping breath. She realizes she's shaking.

"I thought - I thought you were... you were walking funny - "

"I was pacing off the length," Abby says, "Oh, honey." She puts her arms around Patty, and Patty puts her arms around her, and they just stand like that for a minute. Somewhere in the weird giddiness it hits her that she just kissed her friend, and it had been really nice. Not something she's going to do again, but a nice memory to shelve.

"You're a good kisser," Abby says, when they let go of each other and step back to resume the moving-in work. "I mean, that wasn't a pass, just saying. Also unexpectedly set-completing, hey!"

"Thank you?" Patty says. She's pretty sure "set-completing" confirms her guess about relationship histories.

"You know, Holtzmann's single," Abby says over her shoulder. "I guess technically we all are, but, uh. Just saying."

Patty's not sure what to make of that, but Abby's being nice about Patty surprise-kissing her, so she's not going to make too much of it. She's glad Abby is okay, that's the important thing.

**4\. Slightly Drunk Kiss**

Erin hasn't had this much fun at a wedding in ages. Her cousin's hung a million fairy lights in the trees, or the venue did, either way, and the DJ is actually good, now playing "Hey Ya" which is danceable both by Erin's generation and the twentysomethings of the friend cohort, and it turned out earlier that Patty knew both the Cupid Shuffle and the Electric Slide well enough to somehow nudge Erin through them despite Erin's lack of expertise. Patty has turned out to be a sort of dream date, as far as trying to not look pathetic at family weddings went - charming to older relatives who play nice, willing to cheerfully but firmly tell off the ones who don't, who tell Erin how _very sorry_ they are to hear about Columbia "not working out".

"Don't be," Patty had said, "New York is lucky she decided to go into the hero business instead," with such a ring of authority that Erin's aunt had fumbled her glass and said "oh, well, New York, of course," deferentially, like Patty really did speak for New York.

And also she likes to dance. The last family wedding, a few years ago, Erin had taken a colleague, a professor in the math department who she was cautiously dating, and when the dancing started he had told her that he did not dance and would not ever dance and she had been stuck at the table with him the whole evening. They'd broken up on the drive home. Patty beats that just by being willing to stand up, but in fact, she's fun; pleasantly in Erin's space without crowding her, so that Erin feels like she's being danced _with_ in this lovely, friendly, not-awkward way.

Kevin probably would have been awkward. Kevin probably would have gone off to dance with the twentysomethings. Kevin almost certainly would not have talked to her mom for twenty minutes about begonias. Kevin is also so magazine-cover hot that Erin's not sure anybody would have actually believed she had landed him as a date without some kind of misdoing, which, technically, as his employer, she would have committed. Patty is a superior plus-one in every way including the way in which, as Erin's co-partner instead of her employee, there's no chance of her thinking she has to put up with Erin to keep her job.

(Erin had mentioned in the lab that she was thinking about asking Kevin to go with her to the wedding. She's not sure why she had announced it, instead of just doing it - maybe she had realized at some level that it wasn't a good idea, and wanted to hear someone else say so. Everyone else had sort of stopped what they were doing, and Holtzmann had said "Kevin? our Kevin?" and Abby had said "oh, which cousin," because, of course, she knew everybody, she had been Erin's wedding date for years, after they had both come out and Erin had gotten old enough to be a person-who-got-to-bring-a-date instead of a person-who-was-a-child-of-other-guests. Erin had told her, and then almost said "oh, you should come," except that Abby was with Holtzmann now, Erin couldn't just go asking her out... with Holtzmann standing right there... it wasn't like being co-investigators again meant she got _everything_ back. So she had shrugged and said, "so, maybe, Kevin?" and Holtzmann had said "EEOC" in a donkey voice, like "eee-ock", and Patty had said "you know, I love weddings" and suddenly Abby was warning her not to slow-dance with Great-Uncle Jake and his wandering hands.) 

The DJ puts on "Zoot Suit Riot", and Patty takes Erin's hands to lead her in a passable swing. Erin's a decent follow but a terrible lead, so she doesn't mind at all. Plus Patty is tall enough to turn her easily; Erin's three inches on Abby, more when she was in heels and Abby wasn't, had meant she had to duck under Abby's arm.

It's dumb to be missing Abby when Erin is right here with the best date she's had in years. Patty's grinning, turns Erin through some complicated twist-and-unroll she'd have to diagram to figure out all the motion vectors in. Maybe it isn't that complicated. Erin grins back at her, and then the DJ slows it way down, "Moonlight Serenade", the Ur-clutch-and-sway from when swing was popular the first time. It's the music of a thousand romance cliches and Erin is looking up into Patty's eyes with her hand up on her shoulder: what the hell, she kisses her. Patty bends down obligingly enough and there's this exhilarating moment of lips! Erin hasn't planned this through! and then they both stumble, losing the beat, and Patty breaks away.

"I don't think that's gonna work," Patty says.

Erin almost suggests they go somewhere else and try again. But, well, working with one ex is hard enough, working with two would be unbearable, and Erin's had a few glasses of wine and is missing Abby; this is possibly not so much about Patty as about the fact that Patty's here. Fuck, she's using her friend. Fuck, at least it's not Kevin.

"Hey," Patty says; Erin's kind of crushing her hand, oops. "I don't do casual but I don't mind a kiss at a party? We're cool?"

"Cool," Erin says, but she isn't; she had thought she was going to _have_ a wedding with Abby, once. "I need to. Um. Drink some water."

Patty nods, and they make their way over to the bar, their glasses long since cleared from the tables. Erin sips her water and thinks about a girl in a graveyard, a long time ago now.

**5\. Hookup Kiss**

New theory: Holtzmann is not smart about people and _neither is anybody else_. Why is Erin looking at Kevin when Abby's right there? Holtzmann's an empiricist, she _believes_ in bisexuality, she just doesn't have any operational data on it from the inside. Holtzmann herself has no trouble doing the Fourier transform on her overlapping attractions, she can catch herself thinking about hands and decompose that back into Abby's (small, soft, steady with circuitry), Patty's (large, strong, marking multiple spots at once in a book), Erin's (writing formulae on the whiteboard faster than even Holtzmann can follow). But maybe bisexuality is like having two perpendicular antennae and a single detector. And an attenuation gate. And a bandpass filter. Who designed this thing?

Even if Erin likes different things in men and women, the signal from Kevin, of all people, shouldn't be so strong that it swamps the whole rest of the room. Kevin, who had rearranged all the books in their library by color because he thought it looked nicer, and when Patty put them back and asked him to never do that again, had rearranged them all by size. Holtzmann has literally had to paint "never pass this line Kevin" lines on the floors around the work areas so he doesn't kill them all poking at things he doesn't understand. They're bright orange and she also put one around the second-floor mini fridge because someone keeps eating Abby's leftovers and Patty and Erin swear it's not them.

Anyways, it's not that Holtzmann doesn't _like_ Kevin, he's fascinating and funny, like a hamster or a beluga whale, she just doesn't get wanting to take him to bed for more than a single novelty ride. And if that's all Erin wants, why doesn't she just _do_ it and then get on with true love?

Holtzmann had gotten her hopes up when Erin started talking about a wedding she had to go to - there'd been a moment when she'd locked eyes with Abby and Holtzmann had had to stop herself from doing a little dance on the spot. And then Erin had kept going on about Kevin and Patty had had to step in before they got into fiasco territory. Maybe Holtzmann was being hypocritical - technically she herself had been Abby's hire at Higgins, when they got together - but Gorin had always said that practical power dynamics were more important than paper ones.

So Erin going with Patty had seemed like an okay outcome. But then! Ever since they went, they've been _smiling_ at each other. And Patty keeps calling Erin "baby". Holtzmann is aware that she sounds juvenile and petulant and that's exactly why she has no real chance with Patty, who is dozens of rungs up the having-your-shit-together ladder from the rest of them. But she had liked it when she was the only one Patty called "baby".

Holtzmann likes attention, she knows that. Wants it even from people she'd also like to stay away from her, like city spokeswoman Jennifer, or dudes. People she doesn't have the choice to ignore, there's something satisfying about needling them or flirting with them, handing back some of the perturbation to her systems. Patty's attention has never felt like that, part of some tug-of-war of disrupt and counter-disrupt. Patty's attention is warm and makes Holtzmann want to glow Cherenkov blue like a happy little fission reactor. By that analogy, Patty and Erin flirting is neutron poison.

She thinks she sees a way forward when she overhears Erin and Abby comparing notes about _kissing_ Patty. This is both exciting - Erin and Abby talking about kisses, while they are to the best of their knowledge alone in a room together - and useful information, that Patty's up for kissing. Holtzmann, crouched in the impromptu darkroom she's made for herself out of the big cardboard box from their new centrifuge, holds very still and listens carefully for tips, or noises that might mean Erin and Abby have moved on from case studies to local implementation. She doesn't hear any, and they don't say much beyond "she's so _tall_!" about the actual kissing, which, yes, obviously, Holtzmann wouldn't want to climb Patty like a tree if she wasn't tall. She would want to wrap her like a boa or something. Anyways, she's apparently kissable not just in the aspirational sense but in practical application, and Holtzmann would like to apply. It even makes sense, like a romantic Feynmann diagram, Holtzmann absorbs Patty and the system releases Abby-and-Erin.

The only question is what kind of approach. Holtzmann doesn't have a handy wedding for needing a date, and it's beneath her pride to fake a lab emergency. But probably, if she has any chance at all of a hookup with Patty (Patty's obviously way out of her league to actually date), she's going to have to play to her strengths, and go all-in Holtzmann style.

The next day Holtzmann waits until they're all in the lab to start unpacking the big Rubbermaid tub that holds some of the last things from Higgins they still haven't unpacked. It's mostly old, failed prototypes - Orgone detector, horripilation quantifier, X-ray specs - and then she finds what she's looking for.

"Hey Abs, remember this?" she asks, holding it up. Abby goes pink.

"Is that..." Patty starts and trails off, apparently not wanting to assume it's what it obviously looks like. (It is.)

"Tactical thermonuclear strap-on," Holtzmann says with relish. "Oh yeah." She winks at Patty. In fact, it's not tactical or thermonuclear at all, it's really more of an assistive device, using a solenoid piston to give the wearer's back and hips a break. But "electric strap-on" sounded like a queercore band, and Holtzmann had stuck radioactive materials caution tape (now peeling) around the belt and legs, and they'd made a lot of puns involving the radiological/sexual meanings of "hot".

All three women have taken a helpless step closer, it's the kind of thing where, even if penetration isn't your thing, it's a fascinating object. Holtzmann is good at those. She has the sudden terrible thought that Abby might read this as a "remember how good it was, don't you want more" move, but, no, Abby's shaking her head and turning away.

" _Please_ don't leave that out where little ears could see it," Abby says, meaning Kevin. Which, god, no, yikes. It just so happens that the perfect place to shelve the strap-on is over behind Patty - imagine that - so Holtzmann saunters on over, letting the piston bit bob as it dangles from the straps. Just as she's tipping the bin forward on the shelf to pack it away, she gives the main switch a little nudge, so the solenoid clicks and buzzes and jerks.

"Hey," Holtzmann says, "I don't think this thing is ready for retirement. Patty?" Patty's right there, over her shoulder; Holtzmann doesn't quite turn enough to make eye contact.

Patty makes a sort of "pff" noise, halfway between a laugh and a scoff. "Aw, baby, are you asking me for real? That thing is something else, but I just don't do casual. And I hope that is not actually, like, Three Mile Island going in anyone's business."

"Pure electronics," Holtzmann says quietly, kind of embarrassed. Why had she decided to do this in front of everybody? Not only is she not getting kissed out of this, but now Erin and Abby both know it. She shoves the strap-on into the bin and spins around, eyebrows engaged, ready to play it off however she has to.

Abby has a tape measure out and seems to honestly not be paying attention. Erin, on the other hand... Erin is flushed, blatantly staring at Holtzmann, and she's rubbing the pen in her hand with her thumb in an indisputably suggestive way.

Holtzmann waggles her eyebrows, because it seems like the only thing to do. Apparently her fishing expedition has caught a fish after all? Better a fish on her pole than two in the - okay, that's the wrong metaphor, but anyways, maybe this is okay. Holtzmann is a brilliant improviser, it's not like she doesn't want to have sex with Erin, and maybe Erin's whole sexual fluster thing would get better if she got laid. Maybe Kevin looked appealing because he was easy meat for the starving! Maybe Holtzmann having sex with Erin is just what she needs to balance having been with Abby, inserting herself on both sides of the equation, as it were. Holtzmann doesn't say anything, she's learned that lesson, just smirks one more time and gets back to work, but when Erin excuses herself after lunch to take an early day, Holtzmann says that she needs to make a scavenging run, and follows her.

It's easy enough to catch up - Erin has the long strides of someone who's still really enjoying not wearing heels, but Holtzmann is willing to scurry in an undignified manner. She comes up from behind, throws an arm over Erin's shoulders, and bumps her with her hip.

"I've got the Mark 2 in my apartment if you're interested," she says, letting her eyes flit between Erin's eyes and her lips.

Erin's pupils dilate a little, but she frowns. "Whoa," she says, "Not okay!" She slips out from under Holtzmann's arm and crosses her arms. "I think Abby would mind that."

"Oh!" Holtzmann says, genuinely surprised. She's been watching them so closely when they're all together, but there are so many hours in the week when they're not. "My bad," she says. "I honestly didn't think you guys had gotten back together yet."

"You - I meant _you_ ," Erin says. " _You_ and Abby."

Every single person in the world is a fucking moron about people.

"We are a split atom," Holtzmann says. "We have fissioned. Peacefully! Like californium or something."

"Uh, except the high neutron emission isn't - "

Holtzmann grins. "Okay. But. You seriously thought I was still with Abby?" This explains so, so much.

"Um, yeah," Erin says. "Abby didn't... say anything..."

"I will not be offended if you want to run back there right now," Holtzmann says practically.

"No, I don't know," Erin says. "She didn't say anything, maybe she didn't want to say anything, I don't - "

Holtzmann puts her hand on Erin's arm. "So, proposal," she says. "I take you back to my apartment, we gossip all night about Abby, and if at some point in there you want to take a ride on my disco stick, I feel that that is the sort of thing friends can do."

Erin smiles, unexpectedly sly. "Are we going to gossip about Patty too?"

Holtzmann looks away. "Maybe."

Erin puts her arm over her shoulders, like Holtzmann had before.

"That sounds nice," Erin says. "I haven't... that would be really nice."

She leans over and kisses Holtzmann's cheek, by the corner of her mouth. Holtzmann hooks her pinky awkwardly over Erin's, up on her shoulder. Single novelty ride, she thinks. And then friends for life. She can totally go for this.

**6\. True Love's Kiss (Or Whatever)**

The bed and breakfast is friendly. It's the kind of place where someone has clearly put a lot of thought into the doorknobs and curtain-coordinating throw pillows and it could be fussy, but it's not, just cheerful and attractive. Patty likes the vase of six carved wooden flowers in rainbow colors - one of several rainbow accents, she sees, looking around. Maybe the proprietor is courting the gay dollar. Or maybe she just really likes rainbows.

"The first time was two weeks ago," she says, grimacing. "I had a young couple in the honeymoon suite upstairs, wedding in Central Park that morning, you know, so when I heard the screaming, at first I thought it was some sort of, ah, mishap, or... well, anyways, they were _drenched_ in slime, the bed was just soaked, it was appalling."

"Did they describe the manifestation?" Holtzmann asks. Erin is taking notes while Abby walks around the lobby-slash-living room with the P.K.E. meter - she's the best at looking calm and professional while she's doing it. (Holtzmann always looks like she's about to bust out with the _Mission: Impossible_ theme. Holtzmann claims to be terrible with the customers, but she still ends up doing a lot of the interviews, and Patty thinks she's just fine at it.)

"They said two glowing red women appeared and circled around the ceiling a few times, and then flew through each other and vanished, right over the bed, and when they flew through each other all that slime fell down."

"I see," Holtzmann nods. "Very intersectional."

Patty doesn't chuckle, because she's got her upbeat-but-serious professional face on which is sort of an always smiling but never laughing affair, but she thinks it. Erin, on the sofa next to her, has started diagramming something in her notes: it's the kind of thing that has a bunch of arrows and greek letters and means she already has a theory of how this particular paranormal presentation is operating. Odds are about even whether Abby is coming up with the same theory or a competing one.

"I was full up, I had to send them down to the Lucerne, complete refund _plus_ a giant Empire State B &B gift certificate," the proprietor says. "I just felt terrible. And of course the whole building was disturbed, and the cleaning, the dry cleaning..." She shakes her head. "I slept up there myself, the whole next week after I got it cleaned up, and it was fine, and then last night I had a couple of girls on the second floor, very sweet, their first trip together? And the _same thing happened again_." She makes an appalled face. "I've put a fortune into renovating this place, I have another honeymoon couple coming in this weekend, I can't have this happening!"

"You made the right call," Patty says, serious-but-upbeat. "Your phenomenon sounds right in the range of things we've seen, I think we're going to be able to clear this up for you. Have you already cleaned the second-floor room?"

"I stripped the linens and started them soaking in the basement," she says. "I have a rug steamer coming in this afternoon. Haven't started on the walls or the bed frame."

"Well," Holtzmann says. "Let's go!"

The room's been ectoplasmed, that's for sure. Patty doesn't need a physics degree to see that. Erin and Holtzmann take some measurements and samples, although it's honestly investigative theater, all the real work will happen when they come back with full gear. (They've got discreet sidearms just in case, but people tend to get a little nervous when they come in with the proton packs before they've even heard the details.)

"I hate to ask this," Abby says, "But were your guests, um, naked? The nights of the incidents?"

The proprietor frowns. "Well, I don't like to - um - but they were wrapped in bathrobes? Or towels? So yes, I think so?"

"And you've had other guests since the first time?" Erin asks. "Without problems."

"A few, yes," she says. "Several older couples... two men who were here that first night stayed for the rest of their stay, they said they didn't want to waste time changing hotels. Tourists, you know."

"Okay," Abby says. "I feel pretty confident we're looking at an exclusively nocturnal manifestation, so you go ahead and clean up, and we'll be back this evening. Can you send anyone who was going to be staying here to a different establishment?"

"I already did," the proprietor says. "It's a miracle this isn't all over TripAdvisor already."

"Okay," Patty says, when they're down all the stairs and back in the car, "What I want to know is, does she know that place used to be a brothel?"

"Noo," Holtzmann says.

Patty holds up her phone, which she's been poking. "I had to double-check, there were never as many up here as like Greene Street or West 27th, but, here it is, Gentleman's Directory, 1870."

"Huh," Abby says. "So that explains the sex ghosts? Wait, we're all thinking sex ghosts, right?"

"If you mean that the apparition threshold energy is piggybacking on the unique psychic signal of - " Erin starts. "I mean, yes."

Patty has certainly been thinking it too - she knows you shouldn't assume but "naked on their wedding night" has a frequent connotation. "Wait," she says, the implications of this finally sinking in. "Does that mean that to catch them, someone's going to have to, you know, to get them to show up?"

She's not a prude, she just feels weird saying it in a professional context. As it is, Holtzmann glances away from the road with eyes all lit up.

"No way," Patty says, before Holtzmann can say anything. She's not up for being propositioned in front of everyone a second time. "There isn't enough personal lubricant in the world, it'd be like the Atacama down there if I'm expecting ghosts."

And now she's swung from prude into crude, great.

"The slime does seem to love me best," Erin says with resignation. "If we're... serious about this, then..."

Patty turns to look into the backseat, but she can't tell if Erin is looking at anyone in particular. She'd gotten pretty close with Holtzmann after they (pretty obviously) hooked up - putting their feet in each other's laps, leaning on each other's shoulders. At one point Patty had caught Holtzmann braiding Erin's hair. The Erin-and-Abby thing seems to be stuck on permanent tension, and Patty's already ruled herself out, so Holtzmann is the most obvious choice here.

"Before we get too far with this," Holtzmann says, "We should consider that the signal here might not just be sex. I mean, we can't assume the other couples didn't do it too, right? But we can figure the two couples who did get slimed weren't just getting it on, they were having a lot of romantic feelings. I mean, wedding night. First trip. Love."

Her voice gets more awkward as she goes, and Patty wishes she could hug her, if she wasn't driving.

"Oh," Erin says, also awkwardly. "That is. A good observation. And a factor that we should consider."

There's a moment of silence.

"And also," Erin says, "The manifestation is intriguing, the double simultaneous portalling, we know that the non-corporeal body is a gateway and so the increased ectoplasm yield from the symmetrical translation - "

"You know what, I'm in," Abby says.

Patty looks back into the back again. Erin is staring at Abby; the look on her face is almost painful to see.

Abby reaches across the backseat for her hand. "Whatever the exact factor here is, I think we can move the needle. And you have to admit there's something fitting about this."

"Fitting or ironic," Erin says, laughing and also blinking really hard. "Oh my god, Abby, really?"

"Doot doot doo," Holtzmann says loudly, "Imagine a partition." She leans over and elbows Patty, who takes her arm off the back of the seat and faces forward like she doesn't still have her ears peeled. Holtzmann turns on the radio loudly, or rather, Patty realizes, a mix; she can't think of the last time she heard Tears for Fears on the radio. Holtzmann is watching the road intently (and not looking in the rearview mirror), so Patty can look at her for a moment without her reacting. She's smiling.

Patty's pretty sure that, on her side at least, she and Holtzmann could "move the needle" too. Holtzmann is maybe the most fascinating person Patty has ever met, a real live wire, if the wire was thrashing and spitting blue sparks. Patty _likes_ almost everyone but that's different than wanting to slide her hands into the gaps where Holtzmann's overalls don't meet her shirt. Worse, she's pretty sure that Holtzmann would let her do that and more, and then go right back to stealing sips from her drink and sometimes translating when Abby and Erin get going in a science argument. Patty doesn't want a one-off, but Holtzmann isn't going to be interested in brunch and The Strand, and, anyways, if she was she'd probably get instantly recruited to go build stargates or something. So, just like Patty had decided when she decided she wanted to join up: this is not a singles club. Despite the rekindled romance in the back seat.

They get back to the lab. The scientists start building something they're calling a "Pauli Exclusion Projector", that's supposed to keep the two ghosts apart and unable to pull their vanishing act, while Patty starts poking through newspapers and death records. She's keeping files on any background they can connect with a ghost, but the fact is, lots of ghosts never do anything to point to an ID on who they were in life, and an awful lot of people have died in Manhattan. Probably some of the women who worked in the brothel were close to each other, and some quarreled, and who knows whether any of that has anything to do with the ghosts there now. Even in the most rare cases when they can identify a ghost and that person left records or diaries, they still have no conclusive idea whether anything they felt or did has anything to do with them coming back; after all, nobody writes down everything they feel.

Patty keeps a journal but it's just a few lines a day; her entry from the day she saw her first ghost just says "HOLY SHIT!!!". It's not like she's writing in there about team drama. If Holtzmann crosses a wire and they all instantly become ghosts, good luck to anyone trying to figure out the relationships. Kevin, frequently away from the building, would probably become the authority on them. What a eulogist to have. Patty sometimes eyes their library and wonders just how many of their primary sources were written by Kevins of the past.

The Pauli Exclusion Projector is done. They have dinner and head back uptown. Holtzmann and Abby set things up in the honeymoon suite, jostling each other in passing and squabbling gently about the orientation of the something grid, while Erin and Patty stand around and try not to make eye contact or stare too much at the king-sized bed Erin's going to be occupying shortly. There's a big painting of rainbow trees on the far wall, it's nice.

And then Patty and Holtzmann are out in the hall, on the other side of a door that is closed but not locked, so they can come in quickly. The proton packs aren't really designed for sitting around but Patty and Holtzmann are keeping theirs on because Erin and Abby will be taking theirs off; they'll need to be ready right away once the ghosts show up while Erin and Abby rearm themselves.

"Sooo," Holtzmann says. "Cribbage?"

"I've never played," Patty says. "Don't you need the board?"

"I would suggest War, but what is it good for, absolutely nothing," Holtzmann says. "Also I don't have cards."

Music starts up from inside the room. The Smiths. Not what Patty might have gone with, but she can hear Erin laughing; it's obviously a reference, a memory, something.

Holtzmann sighs and leans her head back against the wall. Patty wants to take her hand, but they're on opposite sides of the little landing space, so she settles for nudging Holtzmann's foot with her foot.

"First seven jobs you had," Patty says.

"First... what?"

"First seven jobs. Like, for me, that's dog walker, babysitter, deli slicer, restocker, cashier, sales floor, writing center assistant."

"Doesn't get you to the MTA."

"Ooh, not even _close_. Writing center was junior year, that doesn't even get me out of Hunter."

"Okay." Holtzmann holds up her hand, ready to count off. "Lawn weeder, auto shop, radioactive Girl Scout - "

"What?"

Holtzmann grins. "Lab assistant, I guess? Lab... something? I don't know, my whole university experience was terrible until I met Dr. Gorin. It was all either dudes trying to explain my own work to me or dudes asking me to fetch coffee, like, hello, no, I _am_ the speaker." She rolls her eyes and makes a disgusted face. "So, yeah, I stopped having jobs. Autonomous genius, five, six, seven, etc."

Patty's not sure the autonomy part is what Abby thought was happening when she first hired Holtzmann, but she's probably come around to agree with it in retrospect. Abby had been the one to propose a four-way equal partnership instead of any kind of hierarchy, when they were figuring out a formal structure.

Someone in the other room audibly gasps.

"But you've got to have a dream job, though," Patty says quickly. "I mean, if you could do _anything_."

"Uh," Holtzmann says, looking at her oddly. "Paranormal trailblazer? Nuclear MacGyver? Hi?"

There's something grossly unfair about the quirk of her lips. No woman should get to have a mouth like that when they're sitting here in this weird enforced-intimacy situation, trying not to listen to their friends going at it.

"This is kind of a secret," Holtzmann says, licking her lower lip. "But this is so much more than I thought it was going to be? I mean, the engineering side of physics, it's like, let's build something unbelievably precise and then calibrate it endlessly so maybe someone can measure some infinitesimal difference and that's a discovery. Abby always believed she would see a ghost, but I thought if I finally built the right detector I'd find her a blip on an oscilloscope, or a fractional shift in a peak on a spectrograph. And then, bam, ghost! Ghost in a bottle!" She does jazz hands. "Don't tell Abby the oscilloscope thing."

Patty nods. Holtzmann grins.

"We were wandering in the phenomenological desert," she goes on, "And we got _inundated_. I'm building shit that touches levels of reality the rest of the world doesn't even acknowledge yet. The only people I'm jealous of are Erin and Abby because they got to see the other side of that portal." She rolls her eyes. "And other reasons. But. No. Did you think I secretly wanted to be an astronaut or something?"

It's a pretty blatant subject change from jealousy, but Patty can go with that. "I never got into the astronaut thing," she says. "My fantasy job was always President. Still is, I guess, although, not really, I like getting to leave my job at work."

"So here you are at," Holtzmann checks one of her devices, "9:13 pm, enjoying some time off."

"Nowhere I'd rather be," Patty says honestly. She's not - okay, she _is_ flirting, a little. Hearing Holtzmann say this is her dream job - it makes Patty realize that Holtzmann is the most making-things-happen person she's ever met. If there was an offer or opportunity she wanted, she'd already be there, seizing it. The only thing she's made a move for that Patty hasn't seen her get is... well... Patty herself. Huh.

"You really okay about Erin and Abby?" she asks. "There's theory, and then there's getting stuck out here on the other side of the door from it."

Holtzmann stretches, rolling her shoulders under the weight of the proton pack.

"Really am," she says. "I'm gonna give their wedding toast, you know? I don't quite get how they both got to kiss _you_ along the way, but - "

"You want to kiss me, baby?" Patty interrupts. "Like, really?" She can feel her heart beating faster, like she's about to see a ghost, but not that.

"You're the ultra-high-energy cosmic ray," Holtzmann says. "Oh my god! As they say. In what world do I not want to kiss you?"

Patty wishes they weren't having this conversation in a hall, wearing proton packs, expecting ghosts any minute.

"I don't know about the cosmic ray," she says, "But - "

"Company!" Abby yells.

Holtzmann is through the door while Patty is still pushing herself to her feet; she just springs from sitting to running. Patty follows her through the door and stops - there are a pair of red glowing ghost-women on the ceiling, each swirling back and forth on her own side of the room, like a pair of parentheses, or betta fish getting ready to fight or something. They seem to be wearing semi-shredded mid-19th-century underwear.

"Rooooxanne," Holtzmann sings, firing at the one further from the door, "You don't have to put on the red light..."

"Put on the red light!" Abby choruses. She and Erin are on opposite sides of the bed, naked, struggling into their proton packs. They both have wildly messy hair.

Patty gets her proton beam going on the nearer ghost. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere or doing anything - the projector is apparently holding - but that's the plan.

"Traps ready," Erin says, joining Holtzmann. Abby fires on the ghost Patty's got, and they all wrangle their ghosts into the traps in perfect synchrony.

The traps close, the lighting in the room goes back to cozy and yellow, and everyone is left standing there anti-climactically.

"Are you wearing shoes?" Patty asks. She's not exactly sure where to look - neither Abby or Erin seems uncomfortable, but Patty doesn't want to _make_ them uncomfortable - so she's noticed that Abby's wearing sneakers.

"We're not doing _Die Hard_ here," Abby says. "Ghostbusting sometimes involves broken glass and running. Shoes are not optional."

Holtzmann is checking the traps and Erin is taking her proton pack back off again. She sits down on the bed and starts taking off her shoes, too.

"Why don't we let you get dressed," Patty says, accepting one of the traps from Holtzmann.

Holtzmann follows her down the stairs, crooning "Ghostie in a bottle" to the tune of the Sting song.

"So that was hot, right?" Holtzmann says, when they get down to the second floor. The proprietor is presumably still holed up in the basement waiting for word that the bust is done. "I always thought the shoes-on thing was dumb, in porn for dudes, but when it's real shoes? Sneakers?"

Patty ignores this. It's probably not the time, but it's better than a lot of times; nothing is chasing them, at least.

"Would you go to brunch?" she asks. "I mean, if I wanted to take you on a date."

"A date," Holtzmann says.

"Or dinner," Patty says. "I don't, uh, I don't take anyone home until the third date, but it can be - I like coffee, I like Central Park - "

"Does this count?" Holtzmann asks. Patty can't read her expression at all.

"I'm serious," Patty says. Just that afternoon, she had thought she wasn't doing this, but, well, now she is. If Holtzmann's up for it.

"I would like to date you," Holtzmann says. "But can I kiss you now?"

She looks so hopeful, so not-joking, that Patty steps forward, and then Holtzmann steps towards her, and there they are. They're each holding a ghost trap, but Holtzmann switches hands on hers so they don't bang together, and then they've each got a free left hand to put on each other's shoulders, to steady themselves and each other, to finally meet keen and careful in the middle, the most extraordinary thing to happen that night.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] Tetrahedron (Five Kisses When There Wasn't A Ghost, And One When There Was)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7956322) by [klb](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klb/pseuds/klb)




End file.
